In the pet wholesale and retail industries, maintaining the health of the animals such as birds, small mammals, fish, reptiles, and amphibians waiting to be sold is a paramount consideration. One such health maintenance concern involves reducing the impact of one sick animal from spreading to others nearby. Thus, in many instances, the animals requires isolation from one another, particularly wherein development of airborne contagions such as those common in birds may occur. Along these lines, it is often preferable to manage any cross contamination of the air in the various animal cages. Another health maintenance concern is providing a habitat that is comfortable for the animal. Some animals are preferably kept in groups while others prefer a more solitary habitat.
In addition to health maintenance, another significant consideration for the wholesaler or retailer is creating a display of the animals to entice sales. For example, enabling observation of the animals in a naturally simulated environment, providing information nearby about the animals being observed, and reducing odors emanating from the habitat produced by animal droppings or meals factor heavily in creating a display as well. Reducing allergens and animal dander produced by the animals is also a consideration. Another significant concern is the security of the animals and any structure housing the animals should take this into account. This is particularly important with exotic species of birds and reptiles with costs ranging anywhere up to tens of thousands of dollars. As a number of animals are typically maintained in one site or section of the store and their respective habitats may take up significant floor space, blending these health and marketing considerations into a satisfactory solution is often challenging.
A wide variety of animal display devices have been developed, although many sacrifice one or more of the foregoing considerations and emphasize others. For example, birds are often displayed in open air cages near heavy traffic locations in the Store. Such cages may be unlocked or have a simple lock to prevent customers from opening the cage. However, the bird is exposed to the ambient air and allergens and dander are not controlled. In addition, the birds in these settings are often removed and stored in a more secure cage at the end of the shift thus further adding to the animal's discomfort.
Another common pet store set up involves dedicated built-in rooms for larger and more exotic birds that may have large a glass panel and an employee entrance in the back. These open air rooms typically do not reduce odors, airborne contaminants, or allergens produced by the animals and thus the customers and employees may suffer. In addition, typically the rooms are not well isolated and one sick animal may contaminate a number of animals in close contact, particularly in the situation where the air is shared. The environment surrounding the animals is also unpredictable and thus the animal's health may be a concern.
Reptiles, amphibians, and fish are often maintained in glass enclosures (tanks) that are stacked on shelving units. Each tank or series of tanks may have its own or common light source and common environmental control system. In addition, these tanks are typically exposed to the same ambient air. Also, these animals often have more significant environmental control concerns such as heating, air supply, and lighting and require more stable environment to improve the animal's chances of living a long and healthy life.
As for the marketing concerns, store inventory and internal appearance frequently change, and thus the built-in rooms offer little in the way of adaptability. In order to build a new habitat in another location of the store, additional rooms must be constructed and the old ones may have to torn down. Also these rooms are typically located off to the side and away from the primary foot traffic and thus do not prominently display the animals.
For those displays that do locate animals in the heavily trafficked areas of the store, the presentation of the animals in a pleasing manner while providing security for the animals also presents a challenging solution as some animals are not particularly suited to lots of customer interaction and crowd access may present a problem. In addition, it is often desirable to locate the animals at an off site location such as at a trade show or other public appearance. In those cases, it would be advantageous to have a readily transportable assembly that somewhat resembles the habitat in the retail setting to reduce a change of environment impact on the animals.
In addition to the foregoing, animal display cases often include a series of tanks or cages stacked on individual shelving units. Typically, ambient air is introduced into the tanks by surrounding environmental factors such as heat or wind or otherwise forced into the tanks using a blower device. However, the stale or stagnant air is not always drawn out of the tanks. This is usually detrimental to the animals. A greater concern is the sharing of habitat air, that is, the air that has been exposed to the animals in their tanks, between animals in separate habitats. Cross contamination of an infected or diseased animal or animals highly sensitive to their surroundings due to shared habitat air flow demands that the air entering and exiting the animal habitats be regulated in some manner to reduce the likelihood of such an occurrence.
As many of the animals on display are costly to maintain, various attempts have been made to control the environment in which the animals are kept, particularly with respect to air flow control. One early attempt may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,365,590 to Ruggieri et al. This patent describes a ventilated animal cage rack, primarily for use in a laboratory setting, in the form of a hollow housing divided into a number of horizontally disposed shelf compartments separated from each other by partition walls and having openable front ends that are normally closed off with transparent doors that may be lifted up and slid back above the top of the compartment. The doors isolate the interiors of the shelf compartments from each other and from the interior of the room containing the cage rack. Each shelf compartment is sized to contain a row of horizontally spaced animal cages having open top ends and closed bottom ends. The open top ends are spaced will below the ceiling of the shelf compartment.
Further according to the Ruggieri et al. patent, a low pressure air plenum extends vertically along one side of the cage rack and communicates with one side of each of the shelf compartments. The other sides of the shelf compartments include air inlet openings communicating with the room interior thereby providing a low pressure negative air flow along the top open ends of the contained animal cages to the air plenum and then to a room exhaust system.
While, according to the Ruggieri et al. patent, this air flow system effectively isolates the animals from the room environment in which the rack system is located and eliminates animal odors and protects the laboratory personnel from animal dander and allergens that would otherwise be introduced into the room, this air flow system suffers from several drawbacks. As each of the cages (six are pictured) on a particular rack are open topped and the air flow is directed across the top of each cage, there is a definite cross contamination between cages on the same rack. Thus, the animals on each rack are not isolated from one another. This would be very costly should a single animal on one rack develop a contagious disease, especially those of the airborne variety. In addition, the air flow described in this patent is unidirectional from the inlet end through the compartment and into the outlet of the compartment into the negative air flow plenum. Thus, odor and other airborne contaminants from any one cage will pass over and mix with the odor and airborne contaminants of all downstream cages. Moreover, the exhaust air from individual racks is dumped into a single plenum right next to the rack outlet. Air drawn from the lowermost outlet passes over all of the rack outlets downstream (above in this case) and thus introduces another layer of potential cross contamination. The latter example of cross contamination occurs between cages on different racks and not just individual cages located on the same rack.
Another ventilated cage and rack system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,954,013 to Gabriel et al. According to that patent, the system is constructed to maximize cage density. The rack includes an air exhaust plenum and a canopy disposed within the rack. The canopy supports a first cage within the rack above the canopy and also positions a second cage below the canopy so as to maintain a gap between the top of the second cage and the canopy to permit air to be drawn in to the air exhaust plenum from the interior of the second cage through the top of the second cage and also to permit ambient air to be drawn across the top of the second cage into the air exhaust plenum from the front face of the rack. In addition, an air supply plenum attached to a blower is connected to the opposite end of the rack to force air into each cage.
According to the Gabriel et al. patent, each cage includes an inlet coupled to an air inlet nozzle projecting from the air supply plenum. Each cage is slidably supported on the canopy which is an upside down channel shaped bracket with lower flanges to support a rim of a cage. In effect, the rear side of each cage is plugged into the air supply plenum and disposed near the exhaust duct.
The top of each cage may incorporate a filter hood with slots wherein air from the cage may exit under pressure of the blower. This cage air is then drawn across the top of the filter hood and beneath the canopy into an exhaust duct that is connected to a vacuum source. In addition, under influence of the vacuum source, ambient air is pulled across the filter hood as well and into the exhaust duct. However, air escaping through the top of each cage freely travels a significant distance before entering the exhaust duct without being contained. Thus, this system relies heavily on the vacuum source to contain the exhaust air emanating from the top of each cage. Random fluctuations in the incoming ambient air or within the vacuum ducting may cause the exhaust air to readily escape into the surrounding environment or other nearby cages. Cross contamination is not inhibited in such scenarios.
Another example of a ventilation system may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,437 to Frasier et al. This system incorporates a blower element to introduce fresh ambient air into the individual animal cages. The forced air passes through a flow control valve and is introduced into each cage through a rear inlet. The air inside the cage is then forced out through a removable top mounted air filter into an outlet plenum. According to the patent, each row of stations has the outlet plenum immediately above the row. Thus, air forced out through a cage filter drifts across other filters in the common row as is similar to the exhaust ducting in the Gabriel et al. patent discussed above and introduces similar cross contamination concerns on the exhaust side of the ventilation system.
Thus, what is needed and heretofore unavailable is an animal display system having ventilation capabilities to prevent the mixture of stale air in individual animal habitats with the stale air from other closely located animal habitats prior to or after exiting the display or habitat area to significantly reduce or remove cross contamination concerns.